A record which will soon be of great value to many applicants for old age assistance has just been found by the workers of the Historical Records and State Archives Surveys in the old files of the St. Johns County Board of Public Instruction at the Orange Street school.

The record is a little bookkeeping book fixed up by lead pencil rulings to take the census of children who lived in St. Augustine. The census was made by Peter S. Arnau in 1892 and included all children between the ages of 6 and 21. The name is given first and following it is recorded the age, color, sex and whether the person knew their A-B-Cs, if they could read or write, and if so, in which "reader" they belonged.

Because of the fact that the county and state did not keep vital statistics of births and deaths in those years, it has been very difficult to check the ages of St. Johns County applicants. In many cases the security authorities have been assisted by the Historical and State Archives workers in searching for some record to prove applicant's age. Off times it is necessary to go to old court suits where the applicant may have been a witness and sworn to his age on the witness stand.

At the time of the 1887 fire the county used the old Loring homestead as a courthouse. Although many of the records were saved then, some age records which would now be considered valuable were burned and even in the 1914 fire not all the county records were saved in the fire-proof vault.

This newly found census book contains the information on 1,081 young people then living in S. Augustine, who had been born in the years between 1871 and 1886. A footnote indicates that the census was taken for the entire county since it says here that "the total number of youths in St. Johns Co. between 6 and 21 years of age" was 2,197. The book containing the remainder of these names has not yet been found.

Another footnote indicates there were 36 children at Sampson where the census was taken by W. D. Braddock, 30 children at Diego, counted by A. G. Mier, 55 at Durbin canvassed by H. Wilson and 26 at Coxettersville, who were listed by Wm. Pacetti.

{Editor: This school census was placed in a school board yard sale and sold in the 1990s. Luckly someone gave the editor this book as well as a few others used on this site. Unfortunately the first book of historical records on St. Johns County Public schools has not been recovered. If anyone has this book, please...please take it to the St. Augustine Historical Society. We have one record that was saved from this book. All the other books can currently be found in the St. Augustine Historical Society Research Library.)